this post was submitted on 03 Feb 2025
370 points (98.4% liked)
Technology
61632 readers
4164 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I think it's more: "Don't use a smartphone". It'll send those requests through any internet connection. No matter if it's a VPN or Tor.
Google hardcodes DNS into their hardware appliances...
So you'd need to block outgoing DNS requests except for your DNS server and god forbid you change location with a smartphone.
I think this is about apps and not the operating system. But yeah, the stock ROMs also phone home to Google. You'd need to patch that. For example like custom ROMs like GrapheneOS do. I don't see another viable alternative. But that still leaves you with the issues with the apps mentioned in the article.
I wouldnt be surprised if Google hardcoded DNS servers even if you override it with a "private dns"
I think it's unlikely that they mess with people's DNS settings. That would just break lots of stuff and internet would stop working for a small amount of people. But there are things like certificate pinning and probably similar things for DNS. We nowadays often circumvent DNS servers and use DOH on an application level. Plus there are things like connectivity checks (made for public wifi portals etc), AGPS... that all connect to Google servers... Well, unless you have that changed, as I said. But that's not something the user can change. You need the whole operating system re-built with different servers in place.
I forgot I'm in a minority of people running a properly secure degoogled ROM.
Same, same. But the occasional app refusing to work due to missing Play services, all the Instagram posts everyone except me took notice of, and all the hoops I have to jump through, kind of remind me of that regularly.
@hendrik @muntedcrocodile then don't use that app. Done.
Just comes with the downside that I can't take part in every day life, talk to my friends, stay connected with old friends, borrow an electric bicycle, transfer money easily... I have to drive to a shop only to see it's closed and they posted that on Instagram... I mean there's a whole world out there which I don't just want to disconnect from and become some sort of hermit...